The Celluloid Closet aimed to give a closer look at queer cinema in Hollywood- and the lack thereof- in order to analyze the effects of queer representation on public opinion, and on the LGBTQ+ community as viewers.  I, a queer artist and viewer, aim to update this analysis to the most recent decade of film.  The concept is to look at films from 2010 to 2019 and figure out what went better, what went worse, and how we can push forward into a brighter queer cinema future.  Some of the main concerns of from queer testimony in the previous film are that representations were either outright negative via open homophobia and/or creating villains with queer mannerisms, or sad and upsetting storylines in which queer characters die and/or are killed.  Of course, the film also brought up the early concepts of queering the narrative, citing moments in the films that are wrong or queerphobic in their original meaning, but can be viewed through a queer lense.  As we will witness, these themes continue forward.  Although the 2010s era has been filled with louder and more open portrayals of queer stories and characters, the undercurrent that queer representation has always been trapped in continues forward- with a few notable exceptions. 

Starting with the bad representation.  GLAAD began ranking Hollywood films for their LGBTQ+ representation in 2012.  The results were typically more than lackluster.  In 2013, only 17 of the 102 movies released featured queer character, but only 7 of those 17 passed the Russo test.  Pain & Gain and We’re The Millers were actually accused of gay panic in this report.  One of the most notable examples in Pain & Gain is Chris Lugo (played by Mark Wahlberg) “asking a bunch of little boys something to the effect of “None of you are homos, right?”” (Lawson).  Hot Tub Time Machine 2 had an infamous scene which GLAAD described as “steeped in gay panic”.  According to the report, 

 The men visit the future and find themselves on the set of hit game show Choozy Doozy, where contestant Nick must complete a task voted on by the audience. Lou, without realizing that whoever suggests the task must also participate, yells out that Nick should be forced to have virtual reality sex with a man. The two spend a few minutes expressing disgust and discomfort at the idea before the host electro-shocks them into complying. At the last second, Lou uses a lifeline to switch places with Adam Jr., and the scene proceeds off-camera with Adam screaming in pain and his fiancé watching from home. When the men balk, the film tries to make it seem as if it is in on the joke with the host asking, “What’s the big deal with the two of you guys sleeping together? You’re acting like it’s 2010.” But the fact that the scene is clearly a moment meant to give the audience some cheap homophobic chuckles rather than anything related to the story or character development makes it clear that the film’s creators still find the idea of two men together to be hilarious and strange.

The gay panic ideal is one of the most dangerous cultures of our current culture.  The entire thing is based off of the Gay Panic Defense, a legal strategy which claims that a person violated, assaulted, or killed an LGBTQ+ person because they temporarily lost their mind while receiving advances from that person.  It validates that fear, disgust, rage, violence, and death are all appropriate reactions to an LGBTQ+ individual.  As of March 5th, 2020, 41 states have no laws stopping the Gay Panic Defense from being used.  This is why films using gay panic ideologies is so important to protest.  It reinforces a sympathy in our culture which allows violence and death to become legal possibilities for LGBTQ+ people, and also asserts queerness and transness as something innately other and wrong.  Theres these, more shrouded homophobic takes, and then, of course, there’s just outright offensive representation. Gods and Kings by Ridley Scott brings us the overseer of the Hebrew slaves, Viceroy Hegep, who offers Moses sex in exchange for silence.  The caricature was deemed inhumane by GLAAD, who commented that, “this ugly, spiteful caricature harkens back to a time when Hollywood routinely depicted L.G.B.T. people as abhorrent villains the audience would naturally root against. For anyone who thinks those days are behind us, Hegep and his pronounced lisp prove that isn’t the case”.  (Robinson)  Another example is The Other Woman, which also received backlash from GLAAD because of Dana, a character played by a hairy man in a dress.  The report responds to this image, saying “If Dana is meant to be the filmmakers’ sophomoric approximation of a transgender woman, it’s far and away one of the most offensive representations we’ve seen in years.” (Robinson)  Now, of course, I think anyone can wear whatever clothing they want, and the awareness of gender identity has come a long way since this report.  That being said, it’s pretty clear that a nonbinary or clothing-queer statement is not being made in this film.  It’s a statement that trans women are men, and it’s never more obvious than by putting a burly cis man in a dress.  

Okay representation is by far the most populated category for this time frame.  Many films brought in LGBTQ+ characters that impressed GLAAD and the Academy at the time, while simultaneously raising eyebrows and conflict from the LGBTQ+ community themselves.  

Dallas Buyers Club is a great example of this at work. Though many championed the film as the AIDS awareness film, and toted it’s trans character, Rayon, there is much to critique about the creation of this film.  The main character, who in real life was reportedly bisexual, was made straight and utterly hateful of the queer community.  Rayon’s character received many critiques from the community for being a token character, good to die once she had served her purpose to the main character’s story.  Also, there is much backlash for cisgender Jared Leto’s performance as a trans woman, especially as trans women had (and still have) next to no representation as actors on the big screen.  It was a huge opportunity for actual representation that was taken away, which was very frustrating to a lot of negative critics of the film.   

Back in 2010, The Kids Are Alright by queer director Lisa Cholodenko also caused a rift between the public opinion and the LGBTQ+ public opinion.  Critic reviews were sky-high, with a current 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.  The plot follows lesbian parents Jules and Nic, who are raising two children made from an anonymous sperm donor.  When the kids get curious, they find the donor, Paul, and he becomes a part of their lives.  The story follows Paul worming his way into their lives, until eventually Jules has an affair with him, despite still identifying as lesbian.  The film is widely congratulated for talking about the realities and complexities of marriage.  Meanwhile, there are some damning critiques by high-ranking queer scholars on the content.  Dr. Roisi Ryan-Flood, who is the author of “Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families, and Sexual Citizenship, commented that, “There is a recurring pattern of male sexual access to the lesbian body in visual culture narratives of lesbian motherhood… It raises the question of which narratives featuring lesbians become mainstreamed and why.”  We see great strides forward in that lesbian marriage is being presented on screen, but unfortunately many lesbians do not see themselves and their love properly represented or respected in this film.  

This tension continues in The Imitation Game– a true story about Alan Turing, who was crucial in cracking the Nazi codes during World War 2 and the inventor of the idea of the computer.  Turing was gay as well, a topic that is broached in the movie, although many critics comment that it is not nearly enough.  The film dances and tip-toes around the very concept it says it is championing: the victims of England’s gross indecency laws.  Many point out that Turing is never shown with lovers, either sexually or romantically, in his adulthood.  He is given a small moment as a boy with his first love, but there are no other real adult connections.  Yet, his death via homophobia is displayed at the end, leaving anyone paying attention wondering where all of the context for him being persecuted was.  Although I thought Turing to be endearing in this film (in his own robotic way?), and had a therapeutic cry at the end of it, I found my emotion came from my connection to the man outside the confines of the film, instead of feeling like I had received that connection from the movie itself.  So, in short, Hollywood tried to tackle a big, historical queer issue, but was still too afraid to give queerness the airtime it needs to succeed.

The opposite is true of The Danish Girl, which was GLAAD-nominated in 2015.  In their short review of the film, they said, “It should be noted that The Danish Girl likely brought trans issues to an audience that may not be watching other trans-inclusive entertainment that skews younger like Sense8 and Orange Is the New Black, as the opening weekend numbers revealed that the majority of viewers were over the age of 40.”  Oscar-nominated and highly praised, this film did succeed in some ways.  However, a vast number of queer/trans critiques have either shown a very mixed view or blasted this film to bits.  The main, common complaint is, again, cisgender Eddie Redmaine in a trans woman’s role.  Also often noted is the overwhelmingly dreary, depressing tone of the film, which makes out Lili’s life to be of complete suffering once she realizes that she is a woman.  There are also those that critique the way Lili seems to jump between characters to the point where it feels like multiple personalities, saying that this feels  untrue and pathologizing of the trans experience.  This is yet another film that got hoisted as a queer film success when the actual community feels wholeheartedly torn towards the negative.  This seems to be the main issue with movies that claim to champion queer/trans representation: it seems like the decision of whether they actually did justice or not comes from the straight/cis community.  If I look up “reviews of The Danish Girl”, I get a much more mixed bag, and many positive reviews.  If I search “queer review of The Danish Girl”, my page is flooded with critiques, gripes, and sometimes outright hatred.  I find this to be an extremely interesting part of this era of LGBTQ+ film.  Somehow, the community’s own response to it seems to be blindingly outshined by straight-washed media and reporting of things.  

This being said, there are some films that have led the way in terms of forward-thinking queer representation. First off, we have one of my favourite bisexual characters from media, coming forth from the books to the big screen: Magnus Bane from The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. His representation is complimented by Alec Lightwood, a gay character who eventually begins a romance with Magnus, though their relationship is explored much more in the books, and the show, which came later.  Both characters are far more than their sexualities, and although Alec does struggle dealing with it for a short time, it’s more about his unrequited crush on the same guy the main character, Clary, does at the start of the story.  This film didn’t do very well, but its lack of success had more to do with the overall shoddiness of the quality and less to do with the representation, which was actually some of the best if not the best from 2013, at least as far as Hollywood productions are concerned.  Sony released Kill Your Darlings in 2013, a film about the sordid relationship of budding poets Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, and the looming third figure: older David Krammerer, who seems to have some sort of mysterious relationship with Carr.  The plots of the early Beat movement in poetry and Ginsberg and Carr’s relationship are inseparably intertwined in this captivating trainwreck.  I left the movie unsure of how to feel.  It was such a dreary showing of queerness, with death and murder painted all over the ending of it.  However, these were true events, and at the end of the day, it felt guttural and real- something the queer experience can relate a lot to. Sometimes as LGBTQ+ viewers, we stand back and realize that true representation means that queer/trans people can be anything and do anything, including being bad or flawed people.  For this, I praise Kill Your Darlings.  Although not one of the big bosses of production, Laika produced an animated film that many in my generation will recall from their childhoods with love- ParaNorman.  The movie, which already centers around being bullied and dealing with hate, was the first mainstream animated film to have a secondary character who was openly gay.  His name was Mitch, and he was a extreme jock, a juxtaposition of the ‘sissy’ representation at the time, which was not at all lost on director Chris Butler- who is also gay.  The film, and Mitch, were received quite well, especially considering it was a family-friendly film, a genre which seems to be more guarded from positive queer representation. 

Love, Simon.  Something almost unheard of several years prior to its release, this film is one of the most championed ones from this time period.  The plot follows Simon Spier, a high schooler coming to terms with his sexuality.  It talks about the struggles of being in the closet, secretively exploring, being outed, receiving bullying and backlash, and eventually finding happiness in spite of it.  The movie has scenes with his parents, showing acceptance and love from both his mother and father.  Very few LGBTQ+ people I know were left with dry eyes after Simon’s scene with his mother, played by Jennifer Garner, in which she masterfully explains how Simon is still himself, just more free to be so.  The movie has a few questionable takes, like the fact that his entire friend group ditches him even after knowing what he was going through- but the movie makes it clear they aren’t leaving because of his queerness, and their reconciliation ties this together.  Overall, the movie is cute, emotional, and educational, all at once.  The film sparked more people to come out to friends, family, and loved ones, and even taught some parents to accept their queer children.  Notably, the movie even helped Keiynan Lonsdale, who plays Bram, the main love interest, to come out!  This film, which was released in 2018, is one of the most recent triumphs for LGBTQ+ mainstream film. 

The queer film that works is film that pushes us forward into acceptance.  I would love to see more experimental works, like what is happening in the indie genre with films like Tangerine, but I think we have a bit to go before studios will be brave enough to make it Hollywood.  That being said, perhaps the biggest way we can move forward in LGBTQ+ film is to make the queer/trans critic voices much louder than they currently are.  Films are made for the people- the audiences.  Therefore, the voices of people the film represents should far outweigh other voices when talking about if a movie was an LGBTQ+ triumph or not.  I think the louder we listen to LGBTQ+ critics, the easier it will be to understand what things are mistakes and what things are successes.  By identifying that, evolution is possible.  The truth is, we need far more queer film, for the exact reason why the cis straight person seated next to you is complaining that ‘everything has gay characters nowadays’.  Why is that a problem?  Because merely 6 or 7 years ago, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 was encouraging viewers to sympathize with the Gay Panic Defense.  Because violence and death still follow the queer/trans community, especially trans people, who have received the most limited representation.  Because if there were truly a LGBTQ+ character in every film (which there isn’t- not even close), why would that be a problem?

My laptop burns a dim blue flame into a darkened room.  The lateness of the night is creeping up my body as it sinks lower and lower into the mattress, never moving.  After a few moments, my mind begins to wander.  Is my computer glitching out?  Maybe I should reload my browser.  So I do.  The plainness of the loading screen leers back at me- bright headache white.  I squint my eyes, waiting.  In the temporary blurriness of my vision, white dissipates lazily into blue.  I pause, surprised.  Then I commit.

My favourite colour: blue.  Colour of my father before me.  Colour of my face- a reflection of the screen.  I’m curious of my gaze, which decides to leave me in order to trek its own journey.  I am seeing nothing.  And yet my eyes seem to be seeing everything.  

It doesn’t start immediately.  It takes about twenty minutes before it begins.  The rustling of my family dies out, leaving a blue lake stillness about the air.  The bruised blue-black world beyond my opened window retreats into petty silence.  I begin to feel a haunting sense of stuck-ness.  And then I begin to see.

The screen will flash every now and then.  I know it does.  Ink black warts and bright white grains of rice will tease me with their jarring entrance.  They are here and gone so fast that I begin to wonder if I really saw them at all.  So I look harder.  Into the blue.  Into murky planes of azure, which seem to be both a projection and a curtain.  Am I trying to peek behind the curtain, or am I picking out sharpened pixels in the projection?  I cannot hear the answer over the sudden assault of sound over my ears.

Fate is the strongest 

Fate

Fated

Fatal.

The sound crackles and growls against the base of my skull.  It is rippling.  I straighten, spooked.  What is this distortion?  Are my headphones acting up again?  I take them off as if they are cursed, fingers light and hesitant.  I play the audio directly from my laptop, seated on my legs before me.  The sound rumbles against my thighs.  Not a glitch.  My stomach sinks.  I look around briefly.  There is a damp blue glow, eaten away at the edges by a dull black vignette.  The closed door in the corner suddenly feels locked.  I swallow the lump in my throat.  I wonder, almost automatically- is it blue? My nails tap against the keyboard as I press play again- painted blue, I realize with an unreasonable sense of dread. 

I feel as if I am on a slow-motion roller coaster.  The movie is so dreadfully slow.  It challenges me at times- I want to look away.  To lose interest.  On the parts where our cart inches up the tracks, it feels neverending.  Every now and then we jolt a bit, but for the most part the climb feels like a bored fright.

A bored fright?  I puzzle with myself.  Apparently, I am become oxymoron.  Moron, more like. 

And then I awake at the top of the arch between up and down.  The sudden realization is ice cubes shoved in the back of a shirt by a loved one.  I tense and shiver and squirm, but still we hang.  The suspension before free-fall.  Then the violent jolt of sudden high, mechanical whining pitches me forward.

Mad Vincent sits in his yellow chair clasping his knees to his chest.  Bananas. The sunflowers wilt in the empty pot, bone dry, skeletal, the black seeds picked into the staring face of a Halloween pumpkin.

The voice work is hissing, striking, slashing.  Like a sort of cobra spitting venom at your jugular- only just missing every time.  I’ve never heard someone sound like this before.  And the whine.  It drills at me, like a sudden onset of tinnitus.  I want to get off the roller coaster now.  But I don’t.  It makes me nauseous but I cling to the bars of my seat.  Keeping myself secure or trapping myself to the ride?   

Blue fights diseased Yellowbelly whose fetid breath scorches the trees yellow with ague.  Betrayal is the oxygen of his devilry.  He’ll stab you in the back.

I jump.  My body is iron.  The whispering spitting of words, like wasp bites, jolts and electrifies my skin.  I dare not breathe.  Yellow suddenly feels like an agent of death, and sickens me.  Yet, I feel green- sickened, as if my blue-reflective face has suddenly become a colour pallet for the two to mingle.  To spar.  Sting. 

Though this part finally resolves, it informs the rest of the film for me.  I do not look away again.  I do not zone out again.  The blue screen has me.  It’s got me by my chest, like hooks under the bottom of my ribcage tugging forwards.  It hurts me but I cannot stop.  It hurts me because the end is near.  It looms, staring back through an empty blue screen like someone looking through a one-way mirror.  I see it all the time, though the film continues on for thirty more minutes.  I listen, of course.  I see the stipples in the film.  The shadows that jerk on and off screen in milliseconds.  But it feels like I’ve been let in on the secret now.  Like Lombardo says, I close my eyes.  “Still blue, gleaming blue, in my brain, in my heart, in my stomach.”   

I sit in the dark long after the credits roll.  It is far past 2 in the morning.  Blue is redefined.  Suddenly, things are hiding there, in the blueness.  In the black-blue night sky, and in the pale, pan blue of day.  It’s in green.  It’s in yellow.  Once you see it you cannot go back to the blue before Blue.  Maybe I’m a dramatic little queer, but things feel different.  I know something new about my community that no book or documentary or interview or research piece could have given me.  I feel… directly educated.  Guilty, somehow, for a time period in which I was not alive.  I feel love.  Might I haughtily claim from the comfort of my privilege and health, in my pitch black room, that I see?  The blue glow still emanates from the screen, swathing over my face and eyes.  

Blue is still my favourite colour.

I watched Paris is Burning, by Jennie Livingston, at one in the morning, the gentle glow of purple LED lights illuminating me in my otherwise dark room.  I was unsure of what to expect from this film, as I decided to watch it before reading any critique, description, or context to the movie.  Within the first few minutes, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that this was going to be a documentary, and not a fictional storytelling like I had originally expected.  After those first few minutes, my body grew still. I was sucked into every minute, my eyes never even glancing away from the screen. Occasionally, I would smile, like when the emcee did a read on someone, or when a particularly lovely personal moment happened in an interview.  For the most part, however, I found myself confused by the fact that my sadness and emotion in listening to the subjects of this film was not being reaffirmed in the style of the documentary. The movie left me- melancholy and heavy- at 2:30 am, sitting alone in the now-buzzing purple darkness.  The first thing I did was read bell hooks’ critique of the film, entitled Is Paris Burning?.  It was there that I finally found clarity in the way the film had made me feel, and even furthered and deepened my understanding, pointing out many factors I had missed in my initial viewing.  After this, I decided to read “The Subversive Edge”: Paris is Burning, Social Critique, and the Limits of Subjective Agency, by Phillip Brian Harper, which takes a theory-heavy approach to talking about the failures of accurate social critique and representation in and around Paris is Burning.  I bring the two of these pieces together today because I think their interplay works very well to discuss the realities of the impact of this film on non-queer, non-black/latinx audiences.  Although I now agree with almost all of hooks’ and Harper’s arguments about the film, I cannot (and will not) deny this: I was captivated by this film while watching it. Therefore, I want to address and respect the incredible faults in the way this film was done, while also simultaneously addressing the idea of “queering the narrative”- a culture that has long been forced into existence for minority groups viewing consistently narrow and/or  failing portrayals of themselves on screen. 

Both Harper and hooks begin their critiques of the film by calling out positive reviews that they found unsubstantiated and/or incorrect.  Hooks calls out Vincent Canby’s review, stating that despite claims that this film champions black gay pride and power, “he in no way indicates ways this pride and power are evident in the work.” (150) It’s clear that hooks is frustrated by the lack of awareness and willingness to comment on the ways in which the oppressive nature of white supremacist heterosexual America attributes to the “sadness” he claims to see in the film.  This seemingly tone-deaf reaction by Canby, and by some other positive-stance reviewers, is- in part- the direct result of the failings of this film, according to hooks. Specifically, she says, “Ironically, the very ‘fantasies’ evoked emerge from the colonizing context, and while marginalized people often appropriate and subvert aspects of the dominant culture, Paris is Burning does not forcefully suggest that such a process is taking place.” (150)  Harper, who references hooks many times in his own critique, has similar feelings.  He mentions a separate reviewer, Jim Farber, who stated that the way the ball-goers constructed their identities provides a “subversive edge”, and “(stresses) the sly mutability of identity.” (91)  Harper disagrees, stating that despite the belief by many that this film proves the subjects have found some sort of overwhelming agency over their identity, and the outside reception of that identity in a society that ignores and oppresses them,  “However much they might enjoy such a capacity in the ballroom, the subjects of Paris is Burning were definitively shown to lack it beyond the ball context…” (92)  I include a heavy helping of these authors’ own words here because I think the analysis of these reviews- and others like them- help to drive home the points they make on the failures of the film.  Both Farber and Canby are white male reviewers. It’s not that hooks or Harper want to criminalize the white, and more specifically white male viewer, but that they want to emphasize that the white community is not being awoken to how their privilege, cultural norms, and political world is directly affecting and oppressing the subjects of the film.  How then, can this film truly champion these individuals, if the struggles, pain, death, and subsequent importance of community is made to be separate from the white, hetero, classist elitism pervasive around every corner of their world? Both authors, but especially hooks, would say that it cannot, then, truly champion ballroom culture and people. So what went wrong in this film?  Certainly I see a sense of general good intentionality from Livingston, though hooks might smack me over the head with her critique for saying so. As she so poignantly mentions, “(Livingston’s) ability to assume (the position of interpreter) without rigorous interrogation of intent is rooted in the politics of race and racism.” (153) 

Perhaps most clarifying to why this movie failed to convey the deeper socio-political truths of the lives and experiences of these people is Jennie Livingston’s absence and invisibility within the film.  Upon reading the section in which hooks begins describing this and what it does to the film, I was struck in surprise at how I had so blatantly missed it in my viewing. I’ll first let hooks explain the effect herself: “Since (Livingston’s) presence as a white woman/lesbian filmmaker is ‘absent’ from Paris is Burning it is easy for viewers to imagine that they are watching an ethnographic film documenting the life of black gay ‘natives’ and not recognize that they are watching a work shaped and formed by a perspective and standpoint specific to Livingston.” (151)  Indeed, this effect, once pointed out, is glaringly obvious. At one point, I remember cringing while watching Livingston prod and prod a member of the ballroom as to what professions the people who walked had. At first, the woman responds that most of them are showgirls, and repeats this again when Livingston prods further, growing increasingly uncomfortable and aware of what is actually happening.  It is so heavy-handed and obvious what Livingston is trying to squeeze out of this woman- that these people are escorts and sex workers. I was revolted by the immediate shame-game this seemed to bring to the film. It even cut from that interview to immediately actually talking about and with performers who work as escorts, which felt like an implication that the woman in the interview was somehow wrong for not spilling all the hot gossip about these people.  In reality, I personally saw in that woman someone who cared about these performers, and knew the realities of stigma against sex work, and wanted to protect them. I relate this back to hooks’ overall statement, because despite the fact that I openly disliked that little parlay, I didn’t even know that it was Livingston herself conducting the interviews until I began reading critiques later on. It is so easy, then, to forget how heavy her hand, and her perspective, is on this story, and that is dangerous. 

Similarly, Venus Xtravaganza, one of the main subjects of the documentary, receives a more mediocre treatment towards the end of the film than I ever thought possible. Harper has great insight into what her death actually means, citing it as an example of how failure to conform can lead to tragedy, and how this connects to the Realness portion of ballroom life. He points out the sinister underlying truths to the importance of Realness- life or death. (97) Hooks works to flesh out the other end of this by talking about what the lack of this message in the film did for Venus and for audience reception of her death.  Bluntly, plainly, and truthfully, hooks exposes the reality, saying, “Having served the purpose of ‘spectacle’ the film abandons her. The audience does not see Venus after the murder. There are no scenes of grief. To put it crassly, her dying is upstaged by spectacle. Death is not entertaining.” (155). My own experience mirrored this. I felt I had no time, and that the film was refusing me the space, to mourn the loss of a person I had grown to really like over the course of her appearances. This lack of care taken in portraying her death is only more starkly highlighted by the first end credit of the movie- an ‘In Memory Of’ still, listing a few names.  Venus, who I immediately searched for on the list, is absent.  

For all the plethora of failure in the representation of these people, the impact of Paris is Burning on the modern queer community, and specifically people of color within that community, is inarguable.  RuPaul’s Drag Race and Pose are prime examples of entertainment and performance that celebrates both the ballroom world, and also Paris is Burning’s impact.  Countless words and forms of praise that the queer community uses today comes from the balls, and were made more widely known by the film.  Many of the people who resonate with Paris is Burning are people who do drag themselves, or who love their queer community and this aspect/history of it.  Livingston, in fact, often argues against criticism of the film by pointing out that its success is made by the exact people that critics like hooks claim it is hurting.  While I think this response from Livingston is crude and frankly privileged, the reality of the fanbase is true. Which brings me back to where I started. I was left at the end of my reading feeling very unsure of myself.  I agreed wholeheartedly with the criticism made by these writers, and yet I had, for the most part, enjoyed the film. From the sound of my fellow queer audience members, I’m far from alone. So what is it that still makes this film so meaningful within the community?

I believe the answer lies in the difference between authorship and audience integrity.  I’ve made the point already that the authorship of this film is twisted, heavy-handed, and often irresponsibly vague about the larger socio-political implications of these subjects’ struggles, idolization of white elitist society, and even their deaths.  However, film, and storytelling in general, is a two-way street. Audiences can have immense power over the meaning of a film, as I previously discussed in my response to The Celluloid Closet.  What is so interesting about this film is that, at the end of the day, the interviewees are going to answer with their own truths, regardless of any ignorance or unwillingness to dig into why this is so by the author of the film.  That, I think, is why so many queer people, drag people, and even some of the people in the film itself, can find enjoyment and community in this film despite raging flaws. The reading of hooks and Harper helped me to find that my enjoyment lied not with Livingston’s artistry, but in electing to ignore it, and instead focus on what really mattered to me- the people, and what they were actually saying.  When bell hooks praised Dorian Carey towards the end of her analysis, I resonated deeply. She says, “For those of us who did not come to this films as voyeurs of black gay subculture, it is Dorian Carey’s moving testimony throughout the film that makes Paris is Burning a memorable experience.” (155)  The difference between hooks and I’s view is that I feel this way about everyone who had something to say in this piece.  When you choose to watch this film not for the filmmaker’s voice and point, but for the people’s voice and point, it can be deeply rewarding, I think.  

For example, the beach scene with Brooke and Carmen Xtravaganza was a moment I truly cherished and enjoyed, and may have been my favourite moment of the film altogether.  There’s so much going on in one little interaction. Brooke is speaking about her transition, and her gender-reaffirming surgery throughout most of it. She is glowing and beaming, touching her body lightly as she talks about how it has impacted her for the better.  It was one of the most emotionally evocative moments of the film for me, because those of us who saw the underlying control of the white supremacist, hetero, cis-normative world were, for a moment, reminded of the joy these women find together, and in taking back their own identity.  We see, maybe for the first time, the purely authentic example of how these houses really were family to one another. I love the singing they do at the end of the scene. It’s very open and celebratory of their joy in a way shown no other time in the film. Carmen even ping pongs back and forth between reading/throwing shade at Brooke, and being her cheerleader, which immediately reminded me of my relationship with my sisters.  This shade, of course, holds a distinct underlying meaning, as we grasp from the scene that Carmen has not been able to get these reaffirming surgeries, and may not be feeling the power and womanhood that Brooke is. Of course, all of this is left completely and utterly up to the viewer to glean out of it, which means the average Joe who may not be actively educating themselves on this could just see two trans people frolicking in the sand without any real purpose or meaning beyond the spectacle that hooks so frequently calls out.    

Similarly, the snippets from the two young boys on the street were everything to me.  Despite Livingston’s lack of an argument as to why these boys are in the situation they’re in and what that means socio-politically, I deduced my own.  I understood that there was both joy in these boys’ optimism and beaming faces, while also seeing the underlying sadness that defines their poverty, loss of family, and inevitably, why they are out at 2:30 in the morning.  It was always clear in my head that their situation was the direct result of a white classist capitalist world, but this was of no thanks to Livingston. She provides a relatively blank and responsibility-free canvas, which means that much of the way these people are, and what they say, is left up to audiences to paint in.  

This is why this movie, I believe, is so dangerous for anyone under the sway of prejudice, white supremacy, and a lack of critical judgement of how privilege affects everyone in the world around us.  People who are already awake to the reality of how white supremacist ideals have punished minority culture, or are even experiencing that first hand, are going to have the power to view this from a radicalized lense.  I think the reason why hooks slams this film as hard as she does is because she sees the potential for the subjects of this film to have awakened this radicalized lense in people who do not already think that way. The fact that this film often doesn’t resonate the way it could have in white, unaware audiences is the direct responsibility of the storyteller, Livingston.  In this way, we see that often the responsibility of authorship can be the difference between a story that can be viewed as sensational and voyeuristic, and a story in which all forms of audience have no choice but to swallow the reality medicine.    

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a feature film about indigenous women going on a journey together in Canada, co-created by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, and starring Tailfeathers and first-time actress Violet Nelson.  The film covers abuse, foster care, reproductive rights, shame, and cycles, all within the eyes of the indigenous experience. The film, as Tailfeathers and Hepburn have talked about in multiple interviews, is carefully constructed with the subjects in mind.  The film’s documentary-style “one-take” shooting is done from both a technical, and emotional standpoint. Although I want to tie a bit of subject and film-technique into this post, I really want to focus on authorship, and how it made this film what it is.  

In a Hollywood post-screening interview (linked above), Tailfeathers talked about how the film is inspired by an event that really happened to her.  She expressed that it had a profound impact on her life, so much so that in another interview with Hollywood First Look Features she explained that she sat with the story for a few years before she felt ready to create the film.  In this way, it is already so clear how authorship affects this story. The woman who co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in the film was a part of the actual experience of something like this. It is undeniable to see how personal connection and care can transform authorship in a piece of art- certainly in film.  

A clear example of how this personal experience shaped Tailfeathers’ authorship was in the scene depicted above.  Áila (on the right) and Rosie (on the left) crash into each other on the sidewalk, each of them experiencing their own separate version of distress.  The way that their meeting and fleeing from the abuser is depicted is raw and real in a way that immediately impacted me from the other side of the screen.  I was tense, riled up, and holding my breath. I was worried for Rosie’s bare feet on the road, and for Áila’s anxiety. Every moment that Áila looked back, I felt the fear of knowing that a dangerous man could be following you.  The scene was long and without cuts, but this added even more to the truth of the moment. I’ve been chased and stalked by men on the street before with other women, and this scene was eerie in how truthful it really was. I doubt this scene would have spoken to me this much if it didn’t come from an author who had also experienced and lived this.  

The technical elements of this film are very much nurtured in authorship.  In the same post-screening interview mentioned earlier, both Tailfeathers and Hepburn speak to a question about the reasoning and inspiration behind the lack of cuts (only 13 in the body of the film!) and what it means to them.  Hepburn, who’s IMDb page shows her overwhelming focus towards camerawork and behind-the-camera film elements, used her experience to craft a work capable of bringing the audience into the room with the characters. She talked about how the actors performed the entire film in one go, much like a theatrical performance, and how the cinematographer would actually switch to the next camera of film through 12 choreographed breaks in the work, allowing for this smooth motion of live experience to continue.  Though both Tailfeathers and Hepburn are soft-spoken in their interviews, it’s clear that Hepburn is passionate about every choice being for the benefit of the performance and the method. She says in the interview that she didn’t want the film to feel like it was showing off technically, which is such a huge breath of fresh air when compared to a lot of main-stream, big budget directors these days. What’s interesting is that, in my opinion, the purposeful understatement of the filming actually made it more impressive and poignant, without taking away a single thing from the story and focus of the film.  That’s the power of having the right people authoring an important story. Meanwhile, Tailfeathers has a history based in theatre, which helped inspire the way the piece was rehearsed, and eventually shot. She spoke to the power of a theatrical style of performance in the interview. Especially because Violet Nelson was brand new to acting, using a theatrical style of building the piece just made more sense, and also brought astonishing clarity to every moment they had together. Tailfeathers talked about beat work, which is the process of looking through the script and finding the motivation and connection from moment to moment for each scene.  Beat work is incredibly specific work, and requires many rehearsals and much analysis to do justice. The results speak for themselves. The rhythm and connection of every moment is both so unrelentingly realistic, and subtly artful. If you can’t tell, I might be in love with this film. It’s fun to see theatre people doing such amazing film work, because it really speaks to the power of combining artistic forces to create powerful pieces.  

The subjects of the film are by no means left out of the equation, and the authors lead the charge on this.  The lack of violence shown on camera, despite this involving an abuse story, is purposeful and deeply meaningful.  All three of the women on this project emphasize time and time again how important it is to them that women and indigenous people see this and know that their story is being heard.  The film doesn’t sugarcoat a single thing, but it also artfully skips scenes that would be triggering and unnecessary both for the general public, but more importantly, for the people who relate to the subjects of the film.  When a film is truly made for the people it talks about, this is what it should look like. Because the authors truthfully had indigenous women in mind, the story is crafted for their absorption. It’s not an easy watch, but it is watchable for someone who has been in that experience.  With recent problematic creations, like Thirteen Reasons Why, I feel this film deserves way more recognition as art that actually champions victims and their stories, and wants them to experience the film instead of being triggered by it.  These characters are realistically flawed, without demeaning their incredible strength and vibrancy. An importance emphasis in the film is on Rosie and her dynamic character. Rosie is underprivileged and undereducated, and also a fighter and undyingly compassionate.  Pieces like these start to break apart the stigma of undereducated and/or underprivileged labels equalling stupid and unimportant people. I dare you to watch Rosie sing to her belly in the bathroom of the safe house and not see her as a full, starkly important human being.  

Now that I’ve sung their praises, here’s something I want to close on.  Women like these women, creators like these creators, artists like these artists- they are going to help change and mold our world, if we let them.  That’s why I was absolutely thrilled to learn that Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson are cast in an upcoming female-driven sci-fi film called Night Raiders, produced by Taika Waititi, who is charging forward excellently into our new budding era of film.  The film is directed by Danis Goulet, a Cree woman with a background in casting and directing, who seems powerful and ready to tell more indigenous stories like this one coming up.  I cannot tell you how full my heart is to see creatives finding each other, and lifting each other into the spotlight to tell their stories. May the 2020s hold many, many more indigenous films, art pieces, and creators. 

The Celluloid Closet is quite wonderful in its candor and honesty.  It’s fascinating to finally see others telling the truth of how queer culture has existed in media throughout its history.  Are there things missing from this movie? Of course. But I think, for 1996, this film is incredibly in-depth, honest, and raw.  The commentary from queer creators makes for a very vulnerable take on the films and roles that are discussed. In a perfect world, I would have liked more trans and nonbinary representation.  However, for the time it was made, it does provide a lot of useful information and commentary that I feel is very valid, and also gives us insight into how queer creators felt at the time that this film was made.  It’s interesting because the movie itself is also a peek into the past of film and queer people, though when it was made it didn’t seem directed to be that way.  

I liked hearing the discourse between the man who abhorred sissy characters and the one who liked them.  I feel from both of their perspectives. In some ways it bothers me deeply because I know it’s meant to be insulting and debasing, but on another level I deeply love “sissy” identity and admire many queer people today who behave very similarly.  Jonathan Van Ness, known from Queer Eye, would’ve been categorized as sissy in the time of these films, but is now one of the strongest examples of AIDS-postive queer people kicking ass in life that I know.  I feel like looking at “sissy” now, from a queer-positive lens, it humanizes us. Some of us are going to be serious and clean-cut and down to business, and some of us are going to be silly and funny and twirly, and some of us will be both, and some of us will be none of that and something else.  We are people.  So I stand conflicted in the cesspool of opinions.  I personally love REAL “sissys” who are more than their outward expression, but the trope was so horrifically harmful that it can be hard to enjoy in film.  

I loved learning about new films.  My knowledge of film is very, very minimal.  Seeing so many examples and clips was so helpful for me, and gave me so much more insight than if the movies had only been talked about verbally.  For example, Marlene Dietrich in Morocco. I was shocked to see an example of a woman being so sexually free and open without her femininity being insulted or shown as lesser.  However, it says so much about our stilted views on gender as a binary, and as a man-over-woman binary.

  There’s a reason why it was acceptable for this close-up shot of this man being turned on by Marlene to exist, but not for anyone to be aroused or excited by the male table-hopping “sissy” characters.  

I remember watching Some Like It Hot as a kid growing up, and being so entranced by how the gender was so melded and mixed together.  It was fascinating and delicious to me, even though it was held up under the guise of comedy. I loved hearing Tony Curtis talk about his inspiration for his character.  Sometimes it can be easy to forget that there were performers at the time who really did understand what they were doing, even if it wasn’t the same level of understanding we’d expect from them today.  This part of the film gave me nostalgia, which I enjoyed.   

I was shocked by the scene from ROPE by Alfred Hitchcock.  It was stunning to see the blatant sex and arousal between them.  

 The look they give to each other, and how close they are to each other- it’s incredibly sexually exciting.  To me, it reads as foreplay. The way he talks about the murder is so clearly arousing his partner, which is why the “And then” is so shockingly loud and out of control.  He’s even gasping, open-mouthed towards the end of the clip. It’s too hard to ignore now, even though it’s under the context of a murder. Just really goes to show how ignorant and blind the code-keepers were at that time.  How blind most people were at the time.  

They spent some time talking about how queer characters are too often condemned to death, suicide, or despair.  I appreciated this immensely, for multiple reasons. For one, it was good to see that, even in 1996, there was an awareness of just how discriminating openly queer content still was.  Secondly, it resonated with me. This is still happening. Look at Blue is the Warmest Color.  It came out in 2013, and yet the entire thing is still set in tragedy, pain and despair.  Call Me By Your Name came out in 2017- I bawled my eyes out the entire credits of that movie, and even after it was over.  Not to mention that it depicts a much older man and an underage boy. It’s not that the story isn’t valid or true- I actually watched the film with a gay friend who had been in a situation very similar to the one being told on screen when he was younger.  It’s just that this seems to be the only way we can exist as queer individuals on the screen. We’re still either spectacle, villainy, or tragedy. Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is canonically nonbinary and queer in the comics, and is queer-coded and villainized all throughout the films he’s in.  He’s never shown being openly queer, despite this being true of his base, comic character, but they’ll code him to the death in the subtext. It is a viciously frustrating issue, and it was validating and also tragic to see my same feelings being reflected back at me from 1996. We’ve made progress in saying the characters are queer, but have we made much progress in queer representation recently?  Maybe I’m being too selfish, but I have to say not nearly, nearly enough.

Epstein, Rob and Jeffrey Friedman, directors. The Celluloid Closet. 1996.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Rope. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., 1948.

Sternberg, Josef von, director. Morocco. Paramount Publix Corp., 1930.

Point of view is an incredibly important tool – and perhaps weapon – in Halloween. The way camera angles are designed in this film communicate the POV of specific characters watching each moment or scene. Instead of most shots in the film giving an omnipotent point of view on the scene, the majority of them subconsciously either place character perspectives into point of view, or you, the audience member.  This makes POV incredibly important to understanding, connecting with, and empathizing with characters in the movie. This extends even to Michael Meyers, the obvious terror and antagonist of the film. 

A prime example of the audience being introduced to Meyers’ point of view is at the opening scene, where we watch the first murder from the killer’s perspective.  It becomes clear to the audience that we are the murderer as the knife is grabbed from the drawer in the kitchen, and later, when the mask being placed on the camera lense to indicate the audience’s face.  This being said, the fact that the killer we are seeing through is little Michael remains a surprise until the very end of the scene. How disruptive, to experience a cold-blooded murder from the killer’s perspective, and then realize at the end it was her own baby brother.  Although the monstrousness of Michael’s character is later emphasized by the words of Loomis, we experience it first through point of view work. 

Many of the shots of people walking outside come from the perspective of some sort of predator, indicating Michael Meyers even when he may not be in that specific spot.  The camerawork plays with mixing physical point of view with symbolic point of view. As the elementary school kids are released from class earlier on in the film, the camera is surveying them from behind the chain-link fence, creeping along in a slow pan.  A bit later, as Laurie, Annie, and Lynda finish their conversation, the camera stops following them, and watches them walk some distance away from a singular spot. In this case, the audience knows Michael Meyers wasn’t walking in step with them for their whole conversation and then stopped, but we do get the sense that he is always watching, even when others may feel comfortable and safe.  Similarly, after Laurie gets spooked by Annie’s father, the very next shot shows her walking to her house from a distance, as if we are suddenly lying in wait for her to come home. The shot comes from low on the ground, emphasizing creeping and sneaking. This choice reminds the audience not to relax. The danger is not over. It was not a ‘false alarm’. Anyone can become prey at any time.  When Annie and Laurie are driving to their babysitting job, there is a shot in which the camera surveys their car, and Meyers’ car, passing by from one spot on the side of the road.   

Notice that the camera even bobs down slightly to emulate the way a head would turn to keep looking as the cars passed by.  This behavior is the same as Michael’s in all the scenes we’ve seen him in. Looming, watching from one perch at a time, until no one sees him pop to the next.  Even though Michael is obviously in the car that is following them, and not on the street, the shot still speaks to his point of view on the situation.  

Some shots create a point of view that allows the audience to view events happening right in front of the characters that they don’t see or know about.  For example, when Loomis finds the red truck, we observe him from a viewpoint of someone who already knows what he’s going to find, and what he’s not finding.  We watch him view the asylum clothes Michael was wearing, and watch him find the matchbook from the nurse, triggering him to run for Haddonfield and leave the scene behind.  As he goes, we stop watching him, panning instead to the dead guy in the bushes that Loomis missed. It’s a simple maneuver, but it helps the audience understand that Michael is moving and acting at a pace that is hard even for Loomis to keep up with.  Another great example of this is the shot of Brackett (Annie’s father) and Loomis having a conversation, shown as if we are a third person watching them converse facing parallel to us. The shot provides us the view of the street next to them that we would have standing with them on the sidewalk.  It is from here we can see what they will inevitably never see: Michael Meyers getting away, driving his car right by them. The suspense! The frustration that conveys, showing us that Loomis is desperately searching for a danger that is moving right past him once more, undetected.  

I focused on scenes and shots from before the later murders because I think they are vastly important to the rest of the film.  The amount of suspense, and anticipation that point of view creates in the first half of the film carries us into Meyers’ murder spree.  The audience is constantly asking when he’s going to strike. There are plenty of moments where he could, which are emphasized by point of view, and thereby help us realize the cold, evil calculations with which Meyers acts.  Without these choices in the first half of the film, the murders, and Laurie’s fight, would not be nearly as meaningful, suspenseful, or plain old scary.